1st Edition

The Black Curator Activists for Representation, and Decolonization of Museums

By Kemuel Benyehudah Copyright 2025
104 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

104 Pages 15 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

The Black Curator highlights the role that Black curators have long played in advocating for black artists and social changes and argues that they made a significant contribution to the democratization of museums over the last 150 years. Drawing on oral testimonies and archival research, this book examines how black curatorial activist practices emerged as a social and imaginative response to... Read more

1. The Establishment of the Black Curatorial Lineage; 2. William H. Sheppard, re-imagining African artifacts at a Black College; 3. The Brooklyn Museum, Henry Ghent’s Militant Integration of Black Art; 4. Tufuku Zuberi, Decolonization of the Penn Museum’s Africa Gallery; 5. Fourth Wave Black Curatorial Emergence during the Black Lives Matter Era

Biography

Kemuel Benyehudah is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an independent curator located in Detroit. His manuscript on Black curators and academic museums was recently picked up by Routledge academic press. His interests lie in the arts, music, education, museology, culture, and history. Kemuel is a research associate at the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions. He worked with the Kislak Center in curating Arthur Tress and the Japanese illustrated books. He has curated several exhibitions with the Motown Museum. He co‑juried the Progeny of Change exhibition at Brewhouse Arts in Pittsburgh. He curated Black Athena for the Sidewall Project in Pittsburgh. He recently curated the Echoes from the Rust exhibition at the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery at Wayne State University in Detroit. He worked as a research associate in supporting the Mutter Museum’s Karabots program. Kemuel is a freelance arts writer with Artblog based in Philadelphia. He graduated from Hunter College in New York with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in studio art.